'Eutopism'

(cf. Utopia)

This website has been created expressly to posit a new constellation of words, whose lodestar is 'eutopism', meaning 'how-to-create-a-good-place-to-be.'

Its fellow-words, 'eutopy', 'eutopic' and 'eutopology', will be explained in due course.

The neologism is, of course, cognate with - and indebted to - Thomas More's coining, "Utopia", whose meaning is, however, I submit, ambiguous, even contradictory.

The Oxford English Dictionary

As you shall see, I submitted these new words to The Oxford English Dictionary with the intention of sounding out my proposed words with what is widely considered the most authoritative dictionary of the English language, asking whether there were already words with the meanings which I had ascribed to them, and, if not, if there were a case for their adoption into the language.

There was a short correspondence with The Oxford University Press during June 2004, which included the following sentence:

"[We] have copied all your material to our files, and hope that by the time we are working on vocabulary in that part of the alphabet, we will have enough evidence to proceed to draft an entry."

Perhaps I may give a short account of how the word came into print.
 

New Lanark

In June 2001, I was invited to present a talk to The Utopian Studies Society at New Lanark and chose as its title:

Utopia is as Eutopy does: A Tale of Two Communities

New Lanark and Summerhill

Since the dawn of time there have been exponents of what I have coined as 'eutopism', but the two practitioners - as distinct from theorists - whom I chose to exemplify its philosophy speak with similar afflatus from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries:

"I know that society may be formed without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved... and no obstacle intervenes except ignorance to prevent such a state of society becoming universal."

(Robert Owen)

"The observed results... [of self-regulated children] so far suggest the beginnings of a new civilisation more profoundly changed in character than any society promised by any kind of political party. The future of Summerhill itself may be of little import. But the Summerhill idea is of the greatest importance to humanity. New generations must be given the chance to grow in freedom. The bestowal of freedom is the bestowal of love. And only love can save the world."

(A.S Neill)

I copy here the letter written to The Oxford University Press. For their - and now your - convenience and speed of reading, I abbreviated my letter to include only the New Lanark section.

13th June 2002

Eutopy Eutopology Eutopism

I should be very grateful if The Oxford University Press would care to comment on the above neologisms, which I have felt constrained to use, since I know no words to describe the meanings I have in mind.

I have been using these coined words in personal conversation, correspondence, and, as you shall see, in one public address.

They are related to Thomas More's own coinage, with which he entitled the book by which he is best known: Utopia.

Unfortunately, his word has - or has acquired - a pejorative meaning, that of an impractical, mostly unattainable state; there is, apparently, no word extant to impart a meliorative one. How may we refer to a practical experience of 'Utopia'? And what is the point of an ideal state which cannot be demonstrated to exist?

Not Utopia

Wordsworth makes the point emphatically:

Not in Utopia - subterranean fields -
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us, - the place where, in the end,
We find our happiness, or not at all!

Not Utopia, but Rather Rightely... Eutopie

But perhaps our Thomas has not been read aright. Does he not himself say:
"Wherfore not Utopie, but rather rightely my name is Eutopie, a place of felicitie." ⁽¹⁾

However, there are two disadvantages to his neologism: is not 'eutopie' too alien-looking? and does it not sound too much like 'Utopia'?

So, for my own purposes, I decided to anglicise the '-ia' into '-y', and to back-shift the emphasis from Utopia to eutopy, from the second syllable to the first. (you'topy)

---

Last year, I was invited to address The Utopian Studies Society, and chose to describe two communities which sought to put high idealism into practice, exemplifying my meaning of 'eutopy'.

The program-sheet for the day when I addressed the Society was the first time 'eutopy' may have appeared in someone else's print - and I present a shortened form of my address:

Utopia is as Eutopy Does:
Robert Owen at New Lanark

Everyone who has asked himself about the origin of Thomas More's coined word 'Utopia' knows that it derives from the Greek 'no-where', 'no-place'.

Everyone who has not thought deeply about the underlying concept knows that it means, at best, 'idealistic', 'paradise'; or, at worst, 'impractical blueprint', 'Never-never-Land', 'Cloud-cuckoo-land'.

We are sitting here in the Robert Owen Room in the village of New Lanark, home in the early 19th century to one of the most 'Utopian' communities the world may ever have witnessed. It was a mini-'welfare state', as we would now term it, devised by Robert Owen, proto-feminist, proto-co-operativist, proto-socialist, proto-progressive-educator, and proto-communitarian.

I propose a more pragmatic definition. If Owen practised 'Utopia' in this small Scots village, it was definitely somewhere, not 'no-where'. It was here, where we are convened in New Lanark now.

So let us look back to the Greek for a more precise word to describe Owen's experiment. What about 'eutopy'? to be defined as 'a good-place-to-be', (after 'eulogy', or 'good-speak'; 'euthanasia', or 'a-good-way-to-die', and 'euphemism', or 'a-good-way-of-saying-it').

We have all - one trusts - experienced happiness, at some time, in some place. We have experienced 'eutopy' in the middle of a forest, on the top of a mountain, "simply messing about in boats", at a football or cricket match.

Each of us has known happiness, but happiness was not experienced in a void; it happened there, at a place; it happened then, in time. We associate this inner feeling closely with an outer place: eutopy, 'a-place-where-we-were-happy', personally, uniquely to ourselves.

Eutopology

Owen practised what he preached in New Lanark, as many witnesses recorded, in the science of what we may now begin to call 'eutopology', to be defined as 'the study of the evidence of the practice of eutopy'.

Eutopism

I argue a higher case: for the coining of the word 'eutopism', to be defined as 'the theory of creating-a-good-place'. I recall one of Owen's shorter pronouncements, that:

"The object of human existence is, above all else, to be happy."

At the heart of Owen's philosophy was rooted the need for the happiness of children, and 'happiness' must be integral to eutopism. As Sidney Smith pronounced:

"If you make children happy, you will make them happy twenty years after by the memory of it".

Let us look at some of the contemporary witnesses of New Lanarkian eutopy in the school and playground.

"I once had occasion to declare, in the House of Commons... that I never saw any population so moral, religious, well-behaved and happy as that in... New Lanark. The happiness of the children is distinctly expressed in their countenances."

John Smith M.P. 1818

"Our party... entered the play-ground [at New Lanark]... The children's faces, I see them now... Not a tear. Not a wrangle. Peaceful innocence pervaded the whole group. As soon as they saw us, curtsies and bows saluted us from all quarters."

Dr Henry McNab 1819

"In the education of the children, the thing that is most remarkable is the general spirit of kindness and affection shown [by the teachers] towards them... The consequence is that they appear like one well-regulated family, united by the ties of the closest affection. We heard no quarrels from the youngest to the eldest... They had no strife but in offices of kindness."

1819 Report by the Leeds Guardians of the Poor

In closing, may I register my indebtedness to the invaluable Oxford English Dictionary CDrom for my research into these neologisms.

Yours faithfully,
Bryn Purdy

Eutopic Witness: Appendix One
Summerhill Unschool

It should be understood that the play of children is not child's play. Their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-92)

The greatest thing in this world is to know how to be [at ease with] oneself.

Michel de Montaigne

There was never a tutor that did professly teach Felicity, though that be the mistress of all other sciences... [At university] we studied to inform our knowledge, but knew not for what end we so studied.

Thomas Treherne (1637-74)

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard [in Summer]hill...

[mostly] William Blake (1757-1827)

The object of human life is, above all, to be happy

Robert Owen 1771-1858)

Making children happy now will make them happy twenty years hence

Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

An extract from the educational supplement to the 'Newspaper from Nowhere':

[Time Traveller]: "I was engaged in questioning one of the members of this 21st century on how life was conducted two centuries on from my own. I want a word with you about your education. I... gather that you let your children run wild, and don't teach them anything. In short, that you have so refined your education that now you have none."

[Denizen of 'Nowhere']: "In the nineteenth century... real education was impossible. The whole theory of their so-called education was that it was necessary to shove information into a child... Or else he would lack it lifelong. Hurry... forbade anything else. All that is passed. We are no longer hurried. The information lies to each one's hand until his own inclinations impel him to seek it. In this, as in other matters, we have become wealthy. We can afford to give ourselves time to grow."

News from Nowhere1891, William Morris (1834-96)

Summerhill: "...Giving Ourselves Time to Grow"

'Eutopic witnesses'

The Educational Inspector

"It would be difficult to find a more natural, open-faced, unselfconscious collection of boys and girls...

The children are full of life and zest. Of boredom and apathy there was no sign. An atmosphere of contentment pervades the school. The affection with which it is regarded by its old pupils is evidence of its success.

The children's manners are delightful. They may lack, here and there, some of the conventions of manners, but their friendliness, ease and naturalness, and their total lack of shyness and self-consciousness made them very easy, pleasant people to get on with

HMI Report on Summerhill 1949

A Clergyman's-Eye-View

"It's a wonderfully happy bunch of children you have here, Mr Neill... What a pity they're pagan".

Student Visitor in 1963 (the creator of this website)

So distorted has the image of Summerhill become by the sensation-seeking press that, as one who has been able to acquire a broader perspective of the school by living in it for a while, I would like to state, in conclusion, that I consider Summerhill to be a community where the sane priorities of social living are implicit in its daily life. Far from considering Neill an extremist - much less a crank - I regard him as a middle- of-the-roader, whose presence in a saner world might well have passed unnoticed, but whose published findings of his little educational laboratory in East Suffolk may contribute to the understanding of the proper basis of psychological health in our schools of the future.

My visit to Summerhill at an end, I left by the front gate, beside which stood the wall whereon was written the inscription which not only identifies the school, but, with a warning to motorists, accidentally defines its ethos: SUMMERHILL - CHILDREN PLAYING

From: College thesis 1963, published by The Educational Heretics Press as A.S Neill - Bringing Happiness to Some Few Children, by Bryn Purdy1997

Staff-member, (extracts from letters to the above student, 1962-3)

As you foresaw, I liked the atmosphere of Summerhill very much and was very impressed by the old man... Consequently I've arranged to give up my job and start at Summerhill at the beginning of next term . . .

You were right when you said that this was real education. I've never seen a bunch of kids more natural and uninhibited as these are. Their frankness is wonderful to observe... It's a little sad too, to think that so few children are given this chance of self-expression and that the majority must spend their life governed as it is by a repressive environment.

It seems to me that it's all well and good protecting children from parents and society but the system of fines [here] is just not adequate to protect children from other children. The root of the trouble is that there are too many problem kids here and too many new kids. As Ena says, 'It's just not Summerhill any more'.

Are you interested in my observations after spending a term at Summerhill?..I'm rather perturbed at the behaviour of the old pupils who came down at the end of the term. They are a really decent lot but without exception they all trooped off to the pub and quite a few of them came back having drunk too much...

We don't know enough about child psychology, and I include Neill. We have problems with the children and we just have no idea how to cope with them...

The kids are wonderful. I've never met kids as sincere, as loving and as well- balanced (integrated) as our kids are. For all its shortcomings the school is doing a wonderful job and this sort of education must be... the basis of future education.

Thirtyfive years later, after attending the 70th. anniversary of the opening of Summerhill, May 14th 1997

Ay! Summerhill! What an effect that place has on people! I spent a mere 18 months there, and it has affected the rest of my life. Looking back over the years of a not uneventful life, [meat porter in Gateshead, civil servant in Durham, vendangeur in France, butcher's boy in Geneva, wire-factory worker in Germany, Spanish telephonist in Seville, headteacher in Vermont, U.S.A., restaurant proprietor in Barcelona, and a Europe-wide travel courier] if I were to pick out any period that was the most fulfilling in every respect, it would have to be the time I spent at Summerhill.

Going back to it last year was like a dream... Such pleasure just to be there again! Such emotion at meeting old friends who were young when I knew them! It was as though I'd never been away. And I suppose it was because Summerhill has never been far away from my thoughts over the years. I've lots of fond and vivid memories I'll never forget.

Wilf Blakeley

Two Summerhillians:

1) "I preferred the reality to the book"

I had a rude awakening as I realised that [Summerhill the school] was very different from the book... By the time I had fully awakened, I realized that I preferred the reality to the book

Albert Lamb [who read the book as a child in America,
and asked his parent if he might go to England to attend
the school as a pupil]

It didn't always [pause] feel like Utopia. [in response to to a question whether he considered Summerhill a true Utopia]

Albert Lamb [who was editor of Summerhill,
published by Penguin, 1992]

2) "Summerhill is just happpiness."

I perorate with an outstanding 'eu-testimony'. It was spoken to microphone by a child who was not a native English speaker. To some it may not be considered 'good' English, but I cite it as a perfect example of 'eutopian', the language: simple, concise, spontaneous, gender-free, and internationalist.

Summerhillians are Summerhillians, no Japanese or English or French or American or anyting else. No. We are Summerhillians.. Summerhill is the best school I never been. All the boys my boyfriends; all the girls my girlfriends. I love dem. Summerhill is just happiness . . .

Japanese girl, ITV program 1985.

Reference

1. More's Utopia: The English Translation thereof by Raphe Robynson.
     Printed from the second edition, 1556

Eutopic witness: Appendix Two
The Dymock Poets.

The following year, 2002, I addressed The Utopian Studies Society at its Nottingham Conference with the title:

The Nexus between Place and Happiness

In preparation

Eutopic witness: Appendix Three
The Christmas Truce.

In preparation

Moreover, may I invite anyone interested in the broad concept of 'eutopism' to contribute to this website, via
 

Links to places and people referred to above:

The Utopian Studies Society
Robert Owen
New Lanark
Sir Thomas More
Bryn Purdy talks about 'Responsibilist' Education

© Copyright Bryn Purdy,
29.09.04 amended 14.11.04, 30.06.05, 25.11.05, 30.07.06, 12.07.08